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About Alden Loveshade

Alden is a philosopher, personist, writer, playwright, screenwriter, director,
actor, poet, photographer, dumbek drummer, roleplayer, and educator. Worked for others and freelance as a journalist, investigator, columnist, reviewer, teacher, animal caregiver, photographer, and dishwasher.
Claims e doesn’t care about money, but always needs more. Recognized by Phi Theta Kappa, Golden Key International Honor Society, the U. S. Jaycees, and groups of like ilk. They don’t necessarily like em, but they recognize em. Graduated summa cum laude from some university that apparently figured the best way to get rid of em was to graduate em. Alden has worked with Emmy, Oscar, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize Nominees
and Winners but they never shared their awards!
Alden has dual citizenship in the Principality of Sealand and the United States of America. His official title for Sealand is Lord Alden Loveshade. E thinks that makes em sound impressive.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy. If you recall, Jesus of Nazareth didn’t tolerate it either. And right now, America is rampant with it.

This isn’t just about Donald Trump and Barack Obama. This isn’t just about politics. It’s about fundamental Christian values. To understand where I’m coming from, you need to understand where I came from.

I was raised in church. For churches, I was a child acolyte, child/teen/adult choir member, janitor, website and business card designer, Bible school worker, assistant production director, production director, young adult group leader, adult Sunday school teacher, communion server, bylaws reviser, and administrative board member.

I am classified as Caucasian, and I voted in the last presidential primary as Republican.

With that in mind, I remember how Jesus loved and helped sinners, but spoke very, very strongly against religious hypocrisy. Like what is happening in America right now.

“I’m not gonna play much golf, because there’s a lot of work to be done.” –Donald Trump

All right, so the title of this entry is hardly ground-breaking. Even supporters of Donald Trump say he lies (and may justify it by saying all politicians lie and they don’t care).

But comparing the number and type of Trump’s documented lies to those of hundreds of people in studies reveal a couple of startling things. Social scientist Bella DePaulo, who spent two decades studying liars and their lies, wrote “I study liars. I’ve never seen one like President Trump.”

For one thing, he apparently lies much more often than the average person. For another, Trump’s lies are rarely made to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, like many of us do (“Why yes, I really do like your new, whatever-it-is you’re wearing.”) Instead, Donald Trump’s lies are often the opposite: insulting and hurtful. He lies to insult people much, much more often than almost all of the rest of us. In fact, according to records of his public comments, his lies are 10 times more likely to be malicious.

Come to think of it, having listened to Trump speak, maybe that isn’t too surprising either.

To see the full graphics and the Christmas poem described in this letter, check the attachments at the bottom.

Say kids, what time is it? It’s End of the Year Letter time!

I had some guests this year. They included:

1) some welcome out-of-state visitors for the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love
2) a neighbor’s heifer (a young cow) who decided the grass was greener on my side so loved spending the night here while her “parents” were out of town
3) some pretty white wildflowers that when I touched them lovingly gave me a rash
4) some fire ants that loved biting my feet
5) some busy bees that loved being busy inside of my bird feeder
6) an opossum (“possum”) lying by the side of the house that I thought was dead–until I remembered they love “playing possum”
7) and an unwelcome but clever wild mouse that loved the food he took from the shelf, two live traps, and the cats without getting caught. (I did catch him in the third trap, two cardboard tubes I stuck together with peanut butter inside, although to keep him from escaping again I had to cover the tube hole on each end with my bare hands).

My Mom got her formerly fibrillating heart rebooted which helped her a lot.

The year wasn’t without bad news. I lost an uncle, a neighbor’s house burned down, and another neighbor’s house exploded. And I had to file several DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) claims which fortunately worked, but then my computer went kaput.

I got my weight back down, and am weighing helping design curriculum for Abrahamic religions for a religious studies series. I’m finally entering the 21st century by switching my photography from film to digital. I partially built a barn floor, and am working on a special project, writing, editing, and doing graphic design for publications (I created the 21st Centuryesque font used in the heading, and graphics and border of this here letter).

Back to the 20th century, I’ve included the very first piece I ever professionally published, a Christmas poem I wrote when I was 16 years old. Keep in mind I wrote it when I was 16 years old.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, born 226 years ago today, is dead. Defunct. And it has been dead for a long time.

Many of you will say it’s not dead. It’s never been revoked, it’s still in the Constitution, and it’s still the law. And I would agree. But as it existed originally, and from a practical point of view, it’s deceased.

The Second Amendment harkens back to the American Declaration of Independence. No less that President Abraham Lincoln believed that the Constitution should be interpreted through the Declaration’s principles, according to Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by historian James M. McPherson. And that says it is “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” a despotic government. “It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” It is “the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”

To throw off a hostile government, and to provide guards for the future, means having and using arms. The right to bear arms goes back much further, back 100 years to the English Bill of Rights of 1689. And in the 21st century in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court proclaimed the right to bear arms was “clearly an individual right, having nothing whatsoever to do with service in the militia.”

While the nation’s founders did not state a constitutional right of the people to “throw off such Government” once they founded a government, they did continue the tradition of giving people, including individuals, the right to bear arms. In 1791, the Second Amendment passed which says, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

So why do I say the Second Amendment is dead? At its acceptance, and by the traditions that preceded it, it gave people the right to bear arms against a government. From a practical point of view, that means people having arms that could be used to defeat a nation.

In 1791, this was entirely practical. A person of relatively modest means could buy a Kentucky long rifle, then arguably the most effective weapon in existence. (I’ll leave it to munitions experts to debate on whether a field gun or something else was most effective, but in any case, a person could buy one). For something larger, you and your associates could buy and use a real, deadly cannon like members of private groups, including the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, used.

But things have changed, radically. There was the Civil War’s Gatling gun, which was nearly an automatic weapon; and the 1880s Maxim gun, which was. These weapons were not readily available, and were very expensive. The Second Amendment, in its original meaning as interpreted through the Declaration of Independence, was dying.

In today’s world, it’s all over. None of us can go to our local gun shop and pick up a arsenal of thermonuclear weapons. And you can’t go to Walmart to get yourself a nuclear submarine and an armed aircraft carrier. They’re too expensive, and too illegal. That’s what someone in the modern world would realistically need to “throw off such Government.” Thus, by its original meaning, the Second Amendment is dead.

An opinion of an individual member of The Loveshade Family does not necessarily reflect the views of the whole family.

“The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.” — Tweet by Dennis Prager

People talk about “the media” almost as much as they talk about “they.” But who are “they?” And what is “the media?”

“Media” is the plural of “medium.” A medium, in the media sense, is something that’s used by one person to communicate a message to others. “The media” includes every single medium. Every newspaper is part of “the media.” So is every magazine. So is every radio station, television station, movie distributor, blog host, chat group, social network. “The media” is Twitter and Google+ and My Space and Instagram and Facebook. Everyone who communicates on paper, radio, television, film, or Internet is part of “they” and part of “the media.”

“The Media” is actually a concept that exists in the human mind. But in terms of physical reality, there is no such thing as “the media.” You can’t smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, or see it. You can sense a part of it, like watch a television news program or listen to a radio show or read this blog post.

But what about the conspiracy of “the liberal media” or “the conservative media?” I’ve worked for “the media” for a long time. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, the Internet, and more. For years I wrote five days a week for a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper. I don’t remember even once being told if I was supposed to be liberal or conservative. And I don’t remember ever talking to someone who worked for another medium to coordinate what slant we were going to give to the news. I was much too busy doing my job.

But Dennis Prager, and apparently many others, sees the media in the West as a vast conspiracy, a greater threat to America than Russia. Interestingly, Dennis Prager is a radio show host (media), a columnist (media), an author (media), a public speaker (media), and has his own “Prager University” which is actually his media company (media) that posts on Facebook (media), all coming from the West….

This photo of Emma Watson is by Georges Biard (and “censored” by us). It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Emma Watson must stop claiming to be a feminist right now! I don’t care if she has been a champion for women’s rights. I don’t care if she has a HeForShe campaign for personism or equal rights, or wrote a feminist book, or has been a UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador.

She posed for Vanity Fair in a photo that shows parts of the bottoms of her breasts. Her feminism days are over! Feminists cannot show certain parts of their bodies in public! They certainly cannot appear to be sexual beings. Men can, but women can’t. That’s a fundamental part of feminist thought, that women aren’t allowed to do the same things that men….

Confederate flag exhibit in the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Photo, taken by Daderot, released into the public domain.

Little known historical fact: the American Civil War, aka the War Between the States, is over. It ended in 1865.

I say that because it appears many people are still trying to fight that war.

I remember years ago visiting the capitol of Alabama in Montgomery. I was astonished to see both the flag of the United States of America, and the flag of the Confederate States of America, flying above the capitol building.

It was not that I had anything against the flag of the Confederacy being at the capitol. It is a part of Alabama’s history. Many brave and noble people lost their properties and their lives fighting for their homes, for Alabama, and for their view of America. The war, in many ways the most costly in American history, should not be forgotten. The Confederacy should not be forgotten, nor should its flags. I would have been perfectly happy seeing the flag openly displayed inside the capitol building.

But Alabama has not been part of the Confederacy since 1865. Neither has Texas. Texas has been under the flags of six different nations, including itself. Those fly over Six Flags amusement parks, as well they should. But not over the capitol, any more than the capitol of California should fly the flag of Mexico. Nor should Washington D.C. proclaim allegiance to the Nacotchtank. They inhabited the land long before Captain John Smith discovered them at the beginning of the 17th century, and even longer before it became the capital of America. But the flag that flies over the center of government should represent that government and its allegiance, not allegiance to another nation.

We’re now having a battle over statues of the Confederacy. Again, I have no problem with the statutes themselves, even after I learned there were more erected during the assertion of Jim Crow laws over “negros” than at any other time.

But if they’re displayed, they should be displayed as a symbol of American history. They should not be a sign of its allegiance.

An opinion of an individual member or associate of The Loveshade Family does not necessarily reflect the views of the entire family.

“Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.” That’s by Jeff Flake, Republican senator from Arizona. It’s in a piece entitled, “My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump.”

Admittedly Flake is from Arizona, a state where Republicans like he and fellow Senator John McCain can say what they really believe about Trump without fear of it destroying their re-election chances. But in this excerpt from his new book Conscience of a Conservative, he points out how conservatives focusing on fighting Barack Obama instead of working for conservative values helped put Donald Trump in the White House. And while he says liberals are to blame as well, he wisely leaves it up them to “answer for their own sins.”

It’s pretty clear that virtually no leaders in the Republican or Democratic Party are happy with Donald Trump as president. No living president of either party voted for him. Even Vice President Mike Pence strongly disagreed with and distanced himself from Trump more than once before the election.

I believe, as does Flake, that’s it’s time for the Republican Party to assert its own values. It may be necessary for the party to recreate itself. It’s done that successfully before, notably after Republicans Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and President Richard M. Nixon both resigned from office in the midst of scandals. A few years later, it was a new Republican Party, and the new president was Ronald Reagan.

But things have to change if the Republican Party is to retain any semblance of its values. “If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?”

This year is perhaps most significant for what has not happened; nobody I’m really close to has passed away. For that I am very glad.

However, it has been a year for things falling apart and needing repair. I fixed a gutter that leaked; got a computer working; got a modem working; cut/sawed/pulled/mowed small mesquite trees, wild grasses, and cat’s claw to make a path to the front tank (what those of you outside of Texas might call a “pond.”) Am I handyman or not?

Well, not. My intense mowing caused the lawnmower to start puffing out copious quantities of white smoke. I looked at the mower and discovered what looked like a major problem–there was a hole in its side. So we checked with the dealer–the hole had always been there. It was the exhaust. Oops.

Then just days after the warranty ran out on the television, the sound went out. Great timing. Did you know almost nobody fixes televisions anymore? Just throw it away and buy a new one. Anyway, this one got fixed, but certainly not by me.

My mom didn’t get a new hand with a carpal tunnel problem, but did get surgery to help fix it. Mom is scheduling surgery for the other hand.

My long-running animal care gig is over, at least for now. But I do have a couple dozens puppies–which are also kittens. Both terms apply to baby mice. I’m getting a young black-and-white mouse used to sitting on my brown-and-white dog’s head.

In the writing/publishing gig, I published some articles, edited a magazine issue, and did some graphic design for a couple of magazines. I recently learned a book I helped with five years ago is being published. Finally.

I finally got dragged to Six Flags for the first time. I got pushed to try a “mild ride.” I asked, “If it’s such a mild ride, why is it called ‘Pandemonium’?”

From a recent doctor’s visit, I learned that my weight is the highest it’s ever been. Oops. So it’s more exercise and less late night snacking. And more mowing and sawing.

The USS West Virginia and the USS Tennessee burn on Dec. 7, 1941, after Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor. | REUTERS/KYODO

Seventy five years ago today, the United States of America declared war on the Empire of Japan. America had what was widely recognized as a very good reason; the day before, Japanese forces bombed the air base at Pearl Harbor in the then territory of Hawaii.

That’s the last time America had a clear and present danger to itself as justification for declaring war. So why has America gone to war several times since?

The Korean War of 1950-1953 was a colossal failure. The United States got involved in an internal conflict when North Korea invaded South Korea. North Korea today is widely accused of having one of the worst human rights records in the world.

The Vietnam War of 1959-75 was between North and South Vietnam. Again, there was no “clear and present danger” to the United States.

In the 21st century, it could be argued that the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 was an act of war; the headline on some newspapers named it so. But the War in Afghanistan didn’t begin because of an attack by that nation, but by a group of al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters. America didn’t declare war on Texas because of the Fort Hood shooting of 2009, or on the University of Massachusetts because of student participation in the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013.

The Iraq War began with the United States leading a “preemptive strike” (unprovoked attack) on the nation of Iraq in 2003. This was because the nation supposedly might pose a threat to the United States at some future point in time if certain things happened.

So why has America gone to war so many times in the last 75 years? I consulted with a friend who’s an expert on American military conflicts. I asked how many wars had America declared in the last 75 years that proponents didn’t believe would benefit American corporations? Without hesitation, he answered, “none.”

An opinion of an individual member of The Loveshade Family does not necessarily reflect the views of the entire family.